


Feed On Dreams

by Atlas_M_33



Series: Men in Exile [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Keith (Voltron), Character Study, Gen, Happy Birthday Keith!, Hindsight is 20/20, Introspection, Kind of weird ngl, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-06 05:29:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16382300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atlas_M_33/pseuds/Atlas_M_33
Summary: The Garrison trembles the day Keith Kogane returns to Earth.(A different universe’s Red Paladin comes home triumphant.)





	Feed On Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the quote: “I know how men in exile feed on dreams.” by Aeschylus
> 
> This was beta read by my fantastic friend Lasersheith whom I do not deserve in the slightest!!!
> 
>  
> 
> Happy Birthday to Keith!!

 

It’s quiet the day that the Red Paladin sets foot back on Earth for the first time in an age that wasn’t.

He is slender, but not in the same way that he was when he left. Not in the way of the gaunt, dead thing that haunted the desert beyond the dunes and the memory of those who banished him there. Not in the way of something that lived off of stardust and marrow. He is slender, yes, but in the way that a lion is slender. In the way that a wolf is slender.

(In the way that a dagger is slender, slipping unnoticed between ribs and muscle and blood, pulling away and dragging life with it.)

So yes, he is slender, with the same long black hair, now longer. With the same dark, dark blue eyes, catching the desert light and reflecting it back the way that a human’s shouldn’t.

(There was, after all, a reason why those around him often felt unsettled, back when they were first learning how to fly. Why they often felt like the planet was tipping off of its axis and spinning off into the unknown. You don’t stand next to the stuff of stars and find yourself unaffected.)

Yes, he is still slim, still roughened, still unnatural in the same vein as the Fair Folk, just a step too far to the left of normal.

That’s not what matters though.

What matters is this: In one universe the explosion of the Castle of Lions loops three years into the span of seconds, and during those years the Earth is lost.

What matters is this: There is another universe where it doesn’t.

What really matters, in the end, is this: There is a universe where Voltron follows fast on the heels of one Samuel Holt when he returns to Earth, but not fast enough to beat the rumors.

So, on the day the Red Paladin sets his foot back into soft desert sand for the first time in years, he sets his foot back onto a planet that knows and loves and fears him.

This is what they say: That he moves like a shadow and a knife all at once. That he was the first to find a Lion and the first to pilot two. That he was the one who brought the Black Paladin back from the dead.

You didn’t believe any of the rumors, fool that you are, remembering only the angry boy that had ruined your chance for the number one spot on the boards too many times for you to want to extend a hand in friendship. He looked unchanged, after all, until you saw the way he walked and held himself and the new scar that wraps around his cheek like the hand of a lover.

He’s commanding the most powerful weapon in the universe, bending it to his will and soaking the stars in the blood and agony of the ones threatening this insubstantial little blue rock you live on.

You know, now, that the rumors are true.

(It is not hard to see, looking back, how he became the one that sends the invaders scuttling back into the black. There was always something wild about him, and really, it surprised no one that he disappeared after his anchor did.)

He grins savagely, and the wolf at his heels blinks out of existence.

(You do not think it was meant to be a metaphor, but it feels like one anyway, though you don’t know what it means.)

He is taller now, older and wiser and jagged around the edges, and even taking into account the alien armor wrapped tenderly around his form there is something ephemeral about him, something sharp and iron and void. Dark hair and dark eyes with inhuman colors. Ears just a little too pointed. Teeth just a little too sharp.

It is there in plain view now that you have the perspective to see it. This? This is why he never settled for the rest of you. This is why he was and wanted only the best.

Defender? Yes. Protector? Yes. Chaotic? Even more so. A half-breed tearing the universe apart for someone made of dreams and stardust.

(There is another rumor, after all, that he walked the space between the world of the Living and the Dead to reclaim something that belonged to him. Someone. No one has denied it, not even the Paladins that follow him. That is, perhaps, what lends it the most credence.)

He turns back, eyes flashing in the desert sun, and the shiver that runs down your spine has little to do with the cold breeze sweeping in from the canyon. There is something too, to be read in the way his steps strike the ground below him, dust undisturbed in the wake of his movement. It is in the lines of his face and shoulders, in the lines of his back and his hips and in the stretch of his long, long legs down to the ground below him. He is great and terrible in his beauty, the same way a forest fire or an explosion is. The whispers flew up and down halls, between towns and states and countries. He could parse out any lie, they said. Take your head off your shoulders with his knife as soon as kill an attacker to keep it there. His glare was sharp, his swords sharper, and worst of all you couldn’t see him, his armor designed to hide him on ship and soil alike.

He stands at the head of an army like he was born for it.

(Although, you suppose, if the other rumors about the Lions and destiny are true, he probably was. That doesn’t change the weight of the image he presents, nor does it help you gather your courage.)

It’s strange, how he moves among the other Paladins like they are nothing but an extension of his own form. Strange how they all mirror him simultaneously, weaving into and out of empty spaces that are visible to outsiders only after they’ve already been filled. Like their time in space as part of a semi-magical super weapon mixed them together so thoroughly that they might never come apart all the way again. He keeps approaching long after the others have stopped, but still they sway towards him as though connected, pieces mixed irrevocably and eyes trailing after him like he might disappear.

The aliens, the friendly ones that come with the Rebellion, say that he is different from the others of mixed blood, different from the Generals that served the Prince and died for it.

(They say that he killed them, maybe not directly, but that it happened under his orders. That no one knows who managed to get them in the end. That maybe it was him after all. That no one is sure, and that’s what makes it all the more terrifying.)

The people around you draw back slightly with apprehension as he approaches, though he does so silently and with no apparent weapons, even when you know there is no way that the child that slept with a knife under his pillow has grown into a man that goes anywhere unarmed.

They draw back, and really, you can understand why. It’s been years, after all, since any of you laid eyes on the feral child that tore his way into and out of the Garrison, taking the Golden Boy and the record book along for the ride. It does not matter if it is your name at the top now, because even years after they ripped him from the system they couldn’t rip him from your memory. It is his name that still hovers above yours, an unobtainable score immortalized by the way he always managed to take it higher, because he was the stuff of legends even before he got himself expelled and launched into space.

They draw back, because until the Rebellion showed and brought with it the terrifying form of Voltron all of you had assumed death. The Admiral had told you he was gone into the sands, and you all believed her, you all ignored the little voice in the back of your mind telling you that nothing as small as a desert was going to kill Keith Kogane. Telling you that he was the kind of man that was always going to go out with his knife in his hand and his boots on. And now here he is, returned from the dead, with five great mechanical beasts behind him, and the largest of them at his beck and call.

“Where is she?” He asks, and Commander Iverson freezes where he stands, held in place by inhuman eyes.

“Central Command.” He slumps in relief when he is passed by, but the others still stand only a short ways off, watching and leaning, their leader parting the crowd as he strolls unhurried towards the doors.

Admirals aren’t meant to lead armies, after all. That honor falls to the General.

It was the people of the Garrison that sent Keith into the desert, those few years ago, and in the end it was their greatest mistake. (In the end, exile only makes the strong grow stronger, don’t you know? It only sharpens what is left into what is needed. It only guarantees destruction.)

 

* * *

 

The Admiral surrenders.

The Lions fly at dawn.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I should be working on one of my 12 WIPs but I wrote this instead. Comments are always appreciated, I hope you enjoyed!!


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